Impact Final Thoughts
September 16, 2015
By: Josh Boutwell of Wrestleview.com
The TNA-GFW rivalry went by far too quick to really have been something special for TNA, but for the little while it lasted it was fun and tonight’s show was a great finale to that rivarly. The question going forward is where does TNA go from here? There are so many questions right now. It looks like TNA will remain on Destination America through February of next year but where they go from there is still an unknown. Plus, pretty much everything, other than EC3 and the World Title picture, has been built around this GFW storyline for the past couple of months so it’s kind of a company wide reset for the most part. It is going to make things interesting but TNA needs to jump right into the build towards next months Bound for Glory and try their best to make that show special because right now they really need a special show.
The opening segment between Dixie and Jarrett was fine but really the same thing we have heard from both over the last few weeks.
Abyss-Shera was boring as hell and my God Khoya’s new character is just awful. A dancing Indian gimmick, seriously? This dude is like 6’3″, 250 lbs. and looks like a beast, why the hell would you stick him with a gimmick that has ZERO chance of working?! I think that he is still very green and it was a long shot he would ever get over but they just assured he wouldn’t. Just terrible stuff.
EC3’s segment was pretty good and he does such a fantastic job of making people want to slap him in the face. It looks like they want to build towards Jeff and EC3 at BFG but I honestly don’t think Jeff is going to be healthy enough for that at BFG.
The Knockouts Match was really fun with a ton of awesome action from everyone, even Tapa. That was the best Knockouts Match they have had in awhile.
The best part of the GFW feud being over is that we never have to see that same damn clip from Jarrett’s DVD that we have been forced to watch for about a month now. I seriously want to throw up every time they show that thing over and over again. There isn’t a damn X-Division match that they taped for Xplosion or something they could show instead?
TNA gave Lethal Lockdown plenty of time to play out and it was pretty solid booking, as far as Wargames style matches go, the whole way through and Jarrett really played his part well. When he was trying to crawl through the camera hole in the cage and screaming to Karen not to “let them take me” was priceless. My only problem with the match was that Jarrett didn’t take the pin which 100% should have. That would have been the best payoff. Bram being the fifth man was a bit of a surprise and boy was it disappointing after his arrest a few weeks ago or what? God, this guy is so frustrating. He has been so very good since coming to TNA and it is obvious TNA saw something in him and wanting to possibly think about turning him babyface in the future only for him to get arrested. That is one of the many pitfalls of taping that far in advance though. I don’t know what TNA will do with Bram going forward but I honestly don’t see how they can continue on like nothing happened with him.
To my knowledge that was the last Impact they taped at the last set of tapings so I have no idea what TNA will air in the next couple of weeks and I would expect they announce a new set of TV Tapings in the next few days at the least. Either way solid show tonight and nice blow off of the TNA-GFW rivalry.
– Promo/Segment of the Night: EC3
– Match of the Night: Lethal Lockdown (***1/2)
– Overall Grade: B+